It’s irrelevant when a speaker uses their first slide to tell us who they are and what they do, because, at that point, we don’t care. We already assume they have something useful to say, otherwise they wouldn’t be on the agenda in the first place and we wouldn’t have booked to attend the event. The MC can introduce them, then, if we like what the speaker says, we will take what we want out of the talk. Only if they’re a really good fit with what we need, we’ll take up their call to action at the end

It’s useful when a speaker repeats audience questions so the rest of us can hear

There is never enough time for audience networking. The most useful conversations and opportunities arise from the discussions we have with each other

Counter-intuitively, the less speakers do, the more the audience gets out of it